retail therapy. with a nice pull

i had some time to kill this afternoon and found myself at a nearby big box retail store.  the one with the 'exclusive red parallels' in topps flagship products.  i actually needed a few items and, despite what the title of this blog might imply (the first part, anyway), i did not need therapy.  very happy.  that didn't stop me from picking up some packs of cards, however.  i took a shot on 2013 pinnacle, even though i had not seen what i had seen on the blogs so far.  my two packs were pretty meh.  i did get a team 2020 card of jurickson profar

and a base of the guy he kinda sorta will eventually replace, michael young.

you know, thanks to the lack of logos, patp may be able to convince himself that this is young in a red rangers jersey.  unless he looks at the lettering on the back too closely.

hey astros fans! there's at least one card for you in the set!  here's carlos pena.

although i don't think he's with the team anymore.  at first i thought pinnacle accidentally airbrushed his upper arm along with the jersey, but now i think he was wearing a compression sleeve.  the color is wrong though.  i think.  i haven't seen too much of the astros this year.

here's a joey votto parallel

i assume that this is the museum collection parallel.  cory snyder, what do you think?

he's not saying.  still, i assume that the votto is the mc parallel.

here's another insert i found in one of my packs - a ryan braun pinnacle of success

it's a clear acetate card.  i wish i had pulled an insert of somebody else.

i also grabbed a hanger pack of 2013 topps archives.  the insert in that pack was this rod carew 1972 topps bkb design card

the rest of the pack was not bad, with a lot of retired stars.  trade fodder all the same, however.

blasters of 2012 topps allen & ginter were marked down to $12.99 and i bit.  it was actually not a bad little blaster as far as inserts, parallels, and short prints go, but nothing spectacular.  in fact, the card that stood out most to me was this base adam dunn card

he looks like a float in the macy's thanksgiving day parade!

last, but not least, i bought a hanger pack of 2013 topps allen & ginter.  i already have the dodger team set, and most of the dodger mini relics, but what the heck.  i was pretty pleased to pull a super short print auto of college football coach nick saban.

roll tide and all that.  this card will pretty surely wind up on the bay unless there's a bama fan out there wanting to deal.

not a bad way to kill some time on a friday afternoon.  and yes, i opened all of this in my car in the parking lot.  how else would i have done it?